


Same Old Lies

by ratpoet



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, but 5x12 doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned, kinda introspective i guess, season 4, some parts of season 5, swearing abounds because it's mickey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 12:45:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3729427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratpoet/pseuds/ratpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey could fill a fucking book with the things he tells himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same Old Lies

Mickey doesn’t remember much of his childhood. Sure, there are the standard bruised faces and tears muffled into pillows late at night and hopes dashed against the wall, again and again and again, but at this point they don’t really count as memories anymore.

They’re more like stories he tells himself at night, reminders of what his life is, and what it’s always going to be, because he gets it, he gets that hope is fucking dangerous, and he’d rather not fall into that trap again, thank you very much, because he’s seen what hope does to people. He’s seen it break his sister countless times, he’s seen his mom struggling to pick herself up each time she made the same mistake again, and he’s seen it on his own face in the mirror, right before things inevitably go to shit again.

But Ian gives Mickey hope anyway, and he’s stopped trying to run from it because it never worked when he was seventeen and he took a bullet for that idiot and it never worked when he was twenty and he jumped back into Ian’s life even after swearing to himself he wouldn’t.

He wonders when he stopped following his own advice, the same rules that had saved his ass countless times, but he knows he isn’t kidding anyone- they all went out the window the day Ian barged into Mickey’s room demanding Kash’s gun back, and Mickey fucked him instead, with Terry _right fucking outside._

-x-

It’s not like Mickey’s never shoplifted before. It’s just that he’s never shoplifted from the Kash and Grab before, because the store wasn’t exactly near his house. Okay, so it was a few blocks away, and yeah, Mickey had to walk a bit to get there, but that doesn’t mean he had to go out of his way to reach the store. It doesn’t mean he went into the store for anything other than a bottle of Gatorade. It definitely doesn’t mean he went into the store to check out Ian Fucking Gallagher, with his red fucking hair and his plaid shirts, and millions of freckles scattered around his face. Yeah, Ian’s cute, and Mickey can appreciate that, but Mickey doesn’t do this shit. Which is why he’s not in the store for Ian.

He starts going to the store more and more often, stealing whatever his eyes land on first. He knows Ian’s schedule by heart now, but he tells himself that’s only because he prefers not having to deal with the towelhead, and when his visits increase to four times a week, he tells himself it’s only because he keeps running out of things at his house.

Then one day Ian follows Mickey outside the store and screams something about _civic pride_ or some shit at him, and Mickey hurls whatever he can find on the ground at his head (it misses, but not on purpose- or so he says, anyway).

Mickey tells himself seeing Ian’s indignant, flustered face didn’t make his entire day, and that his voice didn’t make Mickey’s stomach drop like a fucking faggot.

(He’s starting to not believe himself sometimes.)

-x-

Ian starts coming over once he and Mandy somehow become friends. Mandy dresses up for him and makes popcorn and Ian smiles at her, saying things like ‘ _you look awesome’_ , and pretends to listen to her chattering away, all the while looking at Mickey from the corners of his eyes.

He always leaves her midway to fuck Mickey in his bedroom, and then gives Mandy lame-ass excuses- flimsy, see through excuses like _someone was in the bathroom_ or _I was checking out Mickey’s gun collection_ and once _,_ even _I fell asleep on the toilet_.

But Mandy doesn’t even blink, she just accepts all the shitty excuses and endless alibis- anything to believe that Ian only came over to their shitty hell of a house for her, and that she was the one to put those dopey smiles on his face.

Mickey sometimes joins them on the sofa afterwards, telling himself it’s only because he wants to play videogames, that’s it. It had nothing at all to do with the way Ian would give him staccato smiles, love struck and dazzling, when Mandy wasn’t looking, like Mickey had done anything at all to deserve them, or the way Ian’s legs would be pressed up against his, on the sofa that was too small for all three of them to sit on at the same time.

And if he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from smiling back at Ian, well then, that’s only for him to know.

(Though he’s sure Ian has his suspicions.)

-x-

Red has always been his favourite colour. Or that’s what he tells himself when Mandy, high off her ass, asks him what his favourite colour is, and Mickey, like the idiot he is, answers that it’s red. Mandy nods and says, “me too”, like just weeks ago she hadn’t screamed at him like a crazy bitch for breaking her bottle of purple nail polish, and didn’t he get that purple was her _favourite_ colour, who cares how many fucking bottles of nail polish she has lying around?

Mickey tells himself that it’s okay, people’s favourite colours change all the time, and what is he, _five_ , to be worrying about what his favourite colour is? 

He tells himself he doesn’t like Ian and he tells himself Mandy doesn’t like Ian either, because things are already fucking hard enough, without adding this shit to the mix.

-x-

Ian gets him a job at the store and Mickey pretends the prospect of seeing Ian everyday isn’t what sold him on the idea in the first place. To his credit, he does try to escape after fucking Ian every time, but he sort of has a job to hold now, and that’s why he sticks around even after the sex is over.

Admittedly, it may not be a job requirement to talk and flirt and roughhouse with Ian, but Mickey does it all anyway.

He’s finding it harder and harder to cook up new lies to keep his peace of mind intact lately.

-x-

Ian talks and talks and talks. He talks about his fucked up family and his asshole brother and West Point and the movies he’s watched and the book he’s reading for school and the latest scam Lip is running and what a complete piece of shit Frank is.

He talks when he’s high and he talks when he’s not and he talks even though Mickey’s never listening (though they both know he is). And because Ian Gallagher is a fucking chatterbox who is literally _incapable_ of shutting up for two seconds, Mickey knows more about the Gallaghers than he ever wanted to.

“And, I mean, Grammy wanted to die, but Sheila choked her with a fucking pillow. That’s not really a blaze-of-glory exit, you know?” he says one day, flipping casually through one of Kash’s porn magazines.

“You mean batshit Sheila?” Mickey asked, incredulous. That lady couldn’t step out of the house, and she was murdering people?

“The one with the agoraphobia, yeah,” Ian says, and then adds with a smirk on his lips, “You impressed?”

“Fuck off, man. You have no idea the kind of shit I’ve seen in my family,” Mickey answers, because yeah, so he’s a little impressed- she choked someone with a _pillow_ , for God’s sake- but he’s damned if he lets Ian find out.

It doesn’t matter because Ian knows anyway.

So of course, Mickey tells him about the time his aunt took a guy’s eye out with a fucking boomerang, because his Milkovich honour’s at stake, and that shit’s fucking impressive, okay?

Ian’s suitably shocked at that, but he isn’t one to back down that easily either, and he hasn’t grown up watching his family add antic after antic to their already extensive repertoire for nothing.

“This one time we needed our aunt to come bail us out of the debacle Frank put us in by cashing her cheques illegally. Only it turned out she was dead, and buried in our backyard. So we stole an old lady to impersonate her from a nursing home instead,” Ian says.

“Seems like the kind of thing your family would do,” Mickey says, before he can think about it. Before remembering that he’s not fucking supposed to know what Ian’s family would or wouldn’t do, damn it.

Ian opens his mouth to say something, and Mickey just knows he’s going to rub it in, so he interrupts Ian before he can start.

“I had this one aunt who poisoned her cheating scumbag of an ex with coke. As in, Coca Cola,” Mickey says.

“How is that even possible?!” Ian asks, eyes wide as the moon. Mickey wants to smack himself for that thought. Since when has he become a fucking poet?

“Fuck do I know, man? Some shit about chemistry or the correct dosage or something. The best part was, the guy was a Pepsi marketer,” Mickey says.

And the awed look on Ian’s face is definitely worth the uneasy feeling in Mickey’s gut from the fact that Ian’s now officially the only non-Milkovich to know that story.

“Remind me to never mess with your aunts,” Ian says with a visible shudder, his enthusiasm considerably dampened.

Of course, it didn’t take long for him to jump right back up and regale Mickey with another Gallagher classic. Just when Mickey thought he’d won, too. He should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy. Nothing was ever _easy_ with Ian.

Mickey tells himself he was only upholding the Milkovich tradition of trumping all others in a competition once he realizes that he’s somehow, over the course of a few weeks, told Ian all the dirty and awe-inspiring things his family’s ever done. He tells himself Ian dragged the stories out of him, like that makes it the truth. Like that makes it enough.

-x-

Mickey tells himself the reason he didn’t kill Frank is because he doesn’t want to kill a man, as if empathy for a fellow human being ever stopped him before. Then he punches an officer and goes right back to juvie.

He pretends he doesn’t miss Ian visiting him and the whispered _‘I miss you’_ s and fingerprints lingering on bulletproof glass. And when he’s finally out, he pretends he doesn’t miss Ian coming to pick him up, offering up lame excuses for his presence, and wrapping his arm around Mickey’s shoulders.

Everything’s different this time, and he wishes he could be glad for that, but he’s not.

-x-

Mickey knows things have to go to shit soon. He knows because lately he’s always fucking _happy,_ like he’s starring in the movie of somebody else’s life. He knows he can't have this for long, this whatever-it-is with Ian, because he isn’t meant to be happy or have good things in his life and he doesn’t deserve someone like Ian anyway.

He tells himself the fallout was a long time coming. He just never anticipated that it would hit _this_ hard.

He gets raped, he gets married, he lets Ian leave, and then he lets Mandy scream at him, because he fucking deserves all of it. He watches Ian catch a bus, hears him give his name as Lip, sees the smirk on Ian’s face as he’s walking up the steps, but he doesn’t do anything. He can't do anything.

Mickey tells himself it’s for the best and he actually believes himself this time. That doesn’t make it any easier.

-x-

Ian comes back and Mickey stops lying to himself. He just gives Ian all he asks for, be it blowjobs or the label of ‘boyfriend’ or going to parties thrown by Ian’s friends, because he can't let Ian leave again. He can't.

And when Ian gives him yet another ultimatum, tells him to come out or let Ian go, then Mickey chooses the only option he can live with. He comes out.

And it’s brutal and bloody and they’re both bruised and bleeding by the end of the night, and Ian’s ribs might be broken, and Mickey’s nose is definitely broken, but they don’t give a fuck.

When they fuck that night, it’s more like fighting, all teeth and passion and force and nail marks. But they laugh as they come, and Mickey thinks that has to count for something.

He thinks it’s high time he stopped lying to himself. He thinks he can manage that now.

Then everything goes to shit again and there it is- the punishment for holding on to hope.

-x-

Mickey tells himself Ian isn’t bipolar, because that’s the easy option, and Mickey knows by now that he’s just a pussy at heart. Ian’s stuck in denial and that never changes, but Mickey has to face the truth one day.

He just wishes that day came sooner rather than later, because Ian hasn’t been himself since the day he came back, but it took Ian getting worse than ever for Mickey to see Ian’s mania for what it is; a symptom of something far worse.

-x-

Mickey can't deal with this shit anymore. He can't keep hoping and keep getting disappointed. He can't look at Ian’s blank eyes, can't look at Ian’s face and keep seeing a stranger, a different boy from the one he fell in love with all those years ago. He still loves Ian- he can't help it, no matter how hard he tries, but he can't do this either.

He tells himself he can stay away from Ian and he tells himself he doesn’t need Ian, and that it’s different this time because he’s the one who’s leaving, not Ian.

And when he ends up in Ian’s bed, stroking his face in a silent apology, he tells himself he wouldn’t have come back had it not been for Ian’s fucking sister, who looks too much like Ian for him to be able to ignore.

But he’s lying and he knows it, too. He knows he can't let Ian go. He knows he’ll deal with whatever life throws at him, all for Ian. And he’s known it since day fucking one.

He knows they’ll always find their way to each other, and Mickey’s a fucking faggot, so yeah, he can admit that they’re just meant to be together. It’s as inexplicable and irreversible as the expansion of the universe.

They may not be meant to be happy, but they’re meant to be together. For better or for worse, till death does them part, and all that faggy shit that Mickey never thought he’d be able to relate to.

He wishes he could believe his own lies. He really does. But Mickey’s fucked anyway, so he can admit the truth to himself for once. He can admit that he’s in this with Ian for fucking life, as he lies there next to Ian, listening to his steady breathing.

And he can admit that Ian makes him happy, even though it’s naïve as fuck to even believe that happiness exists for people like Mickey.  

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> I'm on tumblr @ fiandvee.tumblr.com
> 
> Ps if you leave kudos and/or comments i'll love you forever :)


End file.
